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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29848941">For Want of a Herald</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Shadow/pseuds/M_Shadow'>M_Shadow</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(except Corypheus just exploded the plot), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempts at world-building, Canon divergence happens early and hard, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-Typical complicated ethical dilemmas, F/F, F/M, M/M, Modern Girl in Thedas, OC is an engineer, OC is not a badass, OC knows of Thedas, This is a nuclear explosion and its fallout, This is not a butterfly flapping its wings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 23:15:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,135</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29848941</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Shadow/pseuds/M_Shadow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Across realities, there are a multitude of different potential inquisitors who stumble across Corypheus’s ritual: Human or Qunari, rogue or mage, male or female, good or evil.</p><p>In <i>this</i> reality, no one comes.</p><p>Divine Justinia is a strong woman, for all she is made frailer by age. Faced with an abomination anathema to all she believes, she still fights. But when she knocks the orb away, there’s no one to pick it up. No one to receive the Mark.</p><p>No one to absorb some of the orb’s power.</p><p>The explosion is worse. The <i>breach</i> is worse.</p><p>Thedas’s only hope is that selfsame trebled explosion, powerful enough to punch through the fade, through the Beyond… to somewhere quite different.</p><p>Ari did not sign up for this.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Minor or Background Relationship(s), Solas (Dragon Age)/Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>49</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>For Want of a Herald</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was a dice roll on what actually woke Ari: the abruptly freezing temperatures, the grainy and choking dust, or the rough edges of shattered stone suddenly digging into skin only scantily protected by her sleepwear.</p>
<p>She sat upright so fast her vision whited out. No, wait- that wasn't her vision. That was- dust? Ashes?</p>
<p> Had there been an <i>explosion?</i></p>
<p>The shock of the thought made her inhale deeply- then regret it, as lungs caught on the fine debris permeating the air. A hacking cough ripped through her body. She grabbed the collar of her shirt and yanked it up over her mouth, then desperately gasped for clean oxygen through the thin filter of cloth.</p>
<p>It worked. Sort of. She could still taste the dirt and stone dust and whatever else this was her on tongue, but she could breathe. Whipping her head around didn't help with the confusion and fear- everywhere she looked the world was obscured by greyish particulate. Sight faded into fogged nothingness within meters.</p>
<p>She wasn't where she remembered going to sleep. Hell, she wasn't even in a bed. Had she traveled somewhere? Did she have a concussion? Amnesia? Her head didn't hurt.</p>
<p>Even if she had forgotten recent travel plans, that didn't explain the goddamn explosion.</p>
<p>
  <i>(Gas leak? Terrorist attack? Construction demolition accident?)</i>
</p>
<p>She hugged herself tightly, though she was forced to keep one hand up, holding her makeshift breath mask in place. It was eerily quiet: no screaming people, no fire alarms, no siren wail of incoming emergency services.</p>
<p>Was... was everyone else <i>dead?</i></p>
<p>Squinting, she tried to make out anything helpful. Who knew how long it'd take the dust to settle. The main question was: wait it out here or try to evacuate?</p>
<p>The faint shift of a breeze brought with it a bare whiff of smoke and burnt meat.</p>
<p>Fire.</p>
<p>Fire was something you absolutely did not mess around with. The procedure for fire was <em>get the hell away</em>, and every fire drill she'd been put through since she was four years old was shrieking that fact. The most common divergence between those who survived an emergency evacuation and those who didn't was how fast the individual got moving.</p>
<p>She twisted, turning to drop her free hand to the ground and shove to her feet-</p>
<p>Glowing. Her outstretched arm was glowing. Bright green. <i>What- How- I can't-</i></p>
<p>She squeezed her eyes shut so hard they hurt, then opened them again. No change. Arcing lines of crackling green still curved in flowing patterns, swirling like vibrant poisonous henna across her hand and arm.</p>
<p>No, wait. <i>Into</i> her hand and arm.</p>
<p>
 <i>(Radioactive explosion? Dirty bomb? Hallucinogenic gas?)</i>
</p>
<p>A glance down her body showed every inch of exposed skin was similarly affected.</p>
<p>And - she pulled the waistband of her pants just far away enough to peek - yup, all the rest of her body too.</p>
<p>Trying to shake it off did nothing. Trying to wipe it off- nothing. She started giggling, because she'd woken up to the scariest and most shocking event of her life, but somehow it <em>still kept getting worse</em>.</p>
<p>Her vision blurred. It took her a second to realize that was because she was crying.</p>
<p><em>I think I'm in shock.</em> The thought was distant, analytical.</p>
<p>She didn’t have time to be in shock.</p>
<p>
  <em>Okay. Okay. Deep- no, bad idea. Shallow breaths. But breathe.</em>
</p>
<p>It could be worse. Sure, she was incandescent as a rave glowstick, with swirls of green energy slowly sinking deeper into her skin - and probably giving her mutant cancer or something - but at least it didn't hurt. And hey, bright side: she was probably hallucinating it.</p>
<p>Wait, <em>was</em> that a bright side?</p>
<p>(It… probably beat the alternative.)</p>
<p>Another passing curl of wind brought a stronger smell of smoke, jolting Ari back to her plan. And then- a rushing noise? Whooshing, like something falling through the air. Something large.</p>
<p>The ground shook, as if somewhere not that far distant had experienced another explosion. There was a wash of green- energy? light? gas? - sweeping over and past her, exactly matching the shade of the green energy already soaking into her skin. And adding to it, actually. Caught between repulsion and fascination, she watched the acid green lines thicken, swelling with more power even as they continued to seep under her skin as smoothly as water soaking into dry cloth.</p>
<p>Then the rush of the shockwave struck, stirring up dust that'd barely begun to settle. She forced her eyes away from her limbs, trying to ignore her sudden nausea and the urge to pick or scratch or otherwise try to get. it. <em>out</em>.</p>
<p>At least she had a direction to go in, now: right the hell away, opposite where that came from.</p>
<p>This time, she got as far as shoving halfway to her feet when she realized what she was seeing on the ground, cracked and scattered next to her braced hand. She collapsed to her knees, faintly registering the painful bite of rubble, staring at just beyond her spread fingers.</p>
<p>Broken shards, still gleaming with faint traceries of that eerie, damnably familiar green light. Sparking trails of dying energy flickered across the edges, fading from shattered pieces, each still large enough to show their curved, round shape. Graceful whorls covered the convex side of the shards, hypnotically arching and twisting across the surface.</p>
<p>Oddly beautiful, even in its ruined state. Utterly jarring, for its impossibility.</p>
<p>Solas's orb. From Dragon Age: Inquisition.</p>
<p>For one, brief moment, Ari contemplated if she'd gone mad. (Verdict: Sadly unlikely.) Then she contemplated <em>going</em> mad, because right now, that seemed like it'd be the sane thing to do.</p>
<p>Because if this was real-</p>
<p>(and everything screamed at her that it was, from the chill of the air to the texture of the ground, from the scents on the wind to the ache of her forming bruises-)</p>
<p>If she was in Thedas-</p>
<p>(savage, apocalyptic, hellscape Thedas, with its underground zombie hordes, seething boiling pot of racial-religious-political tensions, mind-controlling demons, rampant assassin guilds, feudal societies, and the god-damned Dread Wolf-)</p>
<p>Oh fuck. Solas.</p>
<p>This had to be right after the final battle with Corypheus. Everything fit: the freshly broken orb, the dust thrown into the air from several hundred tons of shattered temple falling back to the ground after the inquisitor blacks out, even the last flashes of fade green energy from the final sealing of the breach after Corypheus reopened it.</p>
<p>Which meant Solas would be along any second now, planning to collect his orb and take his leave of the inquisitor; eager to stroll off into the sunset and start his planned genocide of every living creature in Thedas. If he saw her here-</p>
<p>She bolted to her feet, and staggered into a run. Objective: get the fuck away from the Orb <em>now</em>.</p>
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